About Me

Hi!

I’m Gail, a little bit odd and a whole lot busy.

I am a writer, a freelance editor, and I have the usual day job.  What I normally write is crime fiction, and I have two series in development, one with an agent as I type this.  I write novels, shorts and flash fiction.  Very occasionally I’ll even pen a poem, but that really is only occasional.  However that’s not all I write, and I’ve recently had some success with steam punk, paranormal prose, and, amazingly, poetry.  This last I find a little odd, but there you go.

I was born in Kent and grew up in Tonbridge and now I live in Swansea.

If you want the general background to my life, I studied at a comprehensive, went to university for a term, but was on the wrong course, then I moved in with my sister for a couple of months after she’d relocated to Wales for work.  After that I was supposed to go backpacking, only it never happened because I met a guy.  The stories of the Christmas Works Do when we met include tales of the two girls seen kissing, an understandable mistake given the free-flowing alcohol and the fact that at the time his hair was longer than mine.

So I’m English, my husband’s Welsh, we got engaged in Ireland, we married in medieval costume and honeymooned in a tent moving around Scotland.  After that, I got a degree in Business Administration, a degree I started eight months pregnant with my son and ended six months pregnant with my daughter while working full time.  Never been any good at making my life easy.

Over my working career I’ve been made redundant four times, but rarely been without a job, and I’ve never really stopped writing, though I’ve had a few moments of swearing I’ll never put pen to paper again as the rejection slips have piled up.

When I’m not writing, I love to read. Am a fan of Lee Child, Simon Kernick, Stephen Leather and Peter Robinson, if you’re wondering these are in alphabetical order as I couldn’t rank them if I tried, they may all write crime fiction, but each has a different appeal.  Other authors who appear on my shelves are Dean Koontz, Terry Pratchett, and David Eddings, and I’m not ashamed to admit I like read Mills and Boon every so often, now I know that’s generally sniggered as, but after a hard day in the office, sometimes it’s good to know on page one what’s going to happen by the time you get to ‘the end’.

So the day job changed, currently I’m doing a lot of risk calculation,which, when you think about it, isn’t a million miles away from what I do when I’m not in the day job, I write about crime, murders mostly. There’s something inordinately satisfying about having a bad day in the office and coming home to beat someone to death with a chair leg, in a purely literary sense of course. Actually, I’ve never done that in a book, perhaps I should.

I’ve always loved puzzles and that’s what crime fiction is, it’s a word puzzle, the trick is to see how long you can keep the reader guessing, which isn’t always easy. However the job of writing is a much easier one than the job of actually being an investigator, after all, I know where the bodies are buried, I wrote them there. So thank you to those with the tough job of actually finding the real murderers, my apologies that I sometimes have to play fast and loose with the rules you live by.

Mostly I’d also like to thank all the people who help me. Those who tell me their horror stories, give me ideas; who point out my typos and atrocious (yes I did have to use spell check for that one) spelling; that tell me when I’m being a moron. A special thanks has to go to Swansea Writers’ Circle who have been very supportive.  And most of all, thank you to my family, who put up with me and keep me scribbling through the darkest hours. Couldn’t do it with out you.